Inside the Star

For ex-NHLers, it's to Russia, with gloves

This season, the Kontinental Hockey League said its 24 teams have a collective 97 foreign players, including Ray Emery, Chris Simon, former Maple Leafs defenceman Bryan Berard, and goalies Tyler Moss, John Grahame and Robert Esche.

Former Ottawa Senators goaltender Ray Emery is adjusting to life in Russia's KHL. The league says its 24 teams have a collective 97 foreign players, including Emery, Chris Simon, Bryan Berard, Tyler Moss, John Grahame and Robert Esche.

MYTISCHI, Russia–Grabbing his Louis Vuitton backpack, slipping on a black-and-white checked toque and making a quick phone call to invite a friend for sushi, Ray Emery grinned as he slipped out of a hockey arena into a moonless night.

It had been a perfect evening for the former Ottawa Senators goalie.

Emery had starred in a 2-1 win for his team, Atlant Mytischi, the first-place club in Russia's fledgling Kontinental Hockey League. The 25-year-old Hamilton native stopped one-timers, battled forwards set up in his crease, and shook off a wicked slapshot in the first period that ricocheted off his mask.

Perhaps just as satisfying, none of the local sports reporters lobbed a single question for Emery as he left the ice – none spoke English, a team interpreter said. And 45 minutes later, as he headed in a chauffer-driven Mercedes to a nearby restaurant in this city 30 minutes north of Moscow, there were no TV cameras or photographers in sight.

It was a stark contrast to his seasons stopping pucks for the NHL's Ottawa Senators. Playing for the Senators starting in 2002 through 2007 (he was the club's starting goalie for three full seasons), Emery was a magnet for controversy. He showed up late for practice, allegedly threatened to kill someone after they were involved in an incident of road rage, was criticized for having an image of boxer and wife-beater Mike Tyson on his helmet and, perhaps unfairly, was held to account for the Senators' failure to win the Stanley Cup.

"At the start I do the old, `Where am I?' when I open my eyes but now I'm used to it," he said. "Sometimes I'm still confused or feel a bit homesick when I wake up. It's been a pretty good break for the most part. I'm just relaxing. It's nice not having that microscope on you, being able to live.

"I miss a lot about Canada, North America, just living there, conversing with people. But at the same time, I don't miss not being comfortable at dinner because people are watching you and you feel eyes on you all the time."

Foreign players – and coaches – are hardly a new concept in Russian hockey. In 1990, a year before the Soviet Union collapsed and when Emery was still an 8-year-old playing peewee hockey, Todd Hartje, a Winnipeg Jets prospect from Anoka, Minn., was invited to play for Sokol Kiev.

"We had potatoes twice a day," recalled Hartje, who went on to write a book about his year in Russia called Behind the Red Line. "I lost 15 pounds, down to 175 from 190."

Over the past 18 years, a stream of North American players and coaches have made their way to Russia.

This season, the KHL said its 24 teams have a collective 97 foreign players, including Emery, Chris Simon – who came to Russia against the advice of his agent – former Maple Leafs defenceman Bryan Berard, and goalies Tyler Moss, John Grahame and Robert Esche.

Emery may be the best-paid North American in the KHL. He's making about $2.5 million (U.S.) this season, bonuses included, and will have to pay just 13 per cent Russian federal tax. His salary is equivalent to $4 million in the NHL because of the more forgiving tax situation, said his agent, J.P. Barry.

The world's economy is in free fall and it's widely expected that the NHL's $56 million salary cap will either remain the same next season or even drop off, which may leave some teams desperate to jettison some second- or third-line players that could end up in Russia.

"It's not so bad," said Rodion Tukhvatulin, the KHL's vice-president of business development. "You think it's any colder in Moscow than it is in Edmonton where they freeze their asses off?"

Four months into his Russian experience, Emery said he's adapting to life in Russia.

"They told me I had to come July 15, right in the middle of my summer," he said. "I knew guys started early here, but we had six weeks of training camp, 12 exhibition games and skated twice a day some days and worked out as well. For two or three weeks I was excited and wanted to prove myself. Then I thought, geez, we still have three more weeks of this. I kind of hit a wall."

In a holdover from Soviet times, Emery and his teammates must stay on a "base" near their arena the nights before a game. The menu, said Emery's Finnish teammate Esa Pirnes, who played in the NHL with the Los Angeles Kings, hasn't changed in four months.

"I saw Esa put ketchup on his spaghetti and I wondered what he was doing," Emery said. "But they don't put sauce on it and it's impossible to find. It's just plain spaghetti. Now I'm reaching for the ketchup."

There have been other adjustments, like getting used to squads of cheerleaders dancing on platforms right behind his net in some buildings. "You kind of look up and they're right there at ice level."

Pirnes recalled an overnight flight in September. A charter plan carrying the team on a road trip landed after an overnight flight. The trip was bumpy and players were anxious for some sleep. But instead of heading to their hotel, the KHL team's bus drove to the arena as dawn began to break.

Players were told to haul their equipment off the bus and unpack it in the visiting team's dressing room. Two months on, team officials have eliminated pre-dawn treks to the rink, but Emery was still bemused by the exercise.

"I didn't do that in junior hockey," exclaimed Emery, who, under league rules for foreign goalies, can only play in 36 of his team's 56 regular-season games in order to be eligible for all of its playoff games.

OMSK IS the second-largest metropolis in Siberia, home to 2 million people, and one of the world's top oil refining companies.

From its centre of wide boulevards, neon-decorated casinos and the University of Omsk, it spreads for some 20 kilometres, sprouting 10-storey-plus apartments, a huge shopping centre, and large plots on the outskirts of the city that are filled with garages and used by local residents to store their cars for the venomous winters.

American goalie John Grahame lives in a first-floor apartment that's guarded by a series of five locks, a video-camera security system and a heavy door that would do any meat locker proud. "When I first saw it, I wondered, `What have I gotten myself into,'" said Grahame, in the first year of a two-year contract playing alongside former NHL MVP Jaromir Jagr.

He goes through periods where his water is shut off for days at a time, though that's not uncommon here. In Moscow, the city's water department typically turns off hot water access every summer for maintenance, leaving some residents of Europe's largest city settling for stove-heated pots of water and sponge baths.

Internet service can be spotty. When it works, Grahame uses his high-speed service to watch U.S. TV channels and to speak to his friends and family using Skype Internet phone calling.

The 33-year-old sat on a dark brown leather couch in his apartment in downtown Omsk. The curtains and walls were burnt orange and the open-concept kitchen featured a new LG fridge and stove.

Earlier this season, Grahame said he sliced open a finger while opening some canned fruit and was taken to a local hospital "It looked like it was out of a Stephen King novel," he said. "I got three stitches when I probably should have got nine, and the interpreter kept telling me everything was fine while I'm looking around at how dirty everything looked. It was not good."

To be sure, being a pro hockey player has perks – even half a world away from the NHL.

Grahame is a celebrity at Barracuda, a spacious restaurant in midtown Omsk with an aquarium tucked into a wall. One recent evening in November, platter after platter of prosciutto, sausages and other meats are brought from the kitchen and the restaurant's owner, a Serb who moved here some 10 years ago, brought complimentary salads – pork salad with mayonnaise, beef salad with beets and red peppers, chicken salad – and beers.

"I love having the hockey players here," the owner said.

The other patrons seemed ambivalent, staring stone faced at Grahame and Wayne Fleming, the former Philadelphia Flyers assistant coach who's in his first year as coach with Avangard Omsk.

Grahame and a team trainer eyed each other and Grahame joked about fighting for the few pieces of fresh vegetables left as garnish on the salad plates. "It's a point where greens have become like dessert," Grahame said

As much as players may gripe about Internet access or veggies, the main concern is security.

Russia has been an unstable hot spot since Communism collapsed. In 1997, then-Russian Ice Hockey Federation chief Valentin Sych was being driven to his country home near Moscow when a man splayed his car with machine gun bullets. Sych was killed instantly.

A year later, in 1998, the NHL hired a former FBI agent to probe the Russian mob's connections with star player Pavel Bure and other players. Several NHL players have also said the Russian mafia has tried to extort money from them.

Former NHL player Alexei Zhitnik told the Los Angeles Times in 1993: "I have a little problem with mafia. They say things like, `blow up your car.' ... The cops can't do anything. No rules. No laws."

Just this fall, a Russian journalist, Magomed Yevoyey, was shot in the head and killed in the back of a police cruiser while being taken to a police station, although police called his death an accident. And in a development tarnishing the KHL, the goalie for the league's team in Riga, Latvia, was mugged walking home from the rink after a game.

Some North Americans here shrug off the suggestion that life is more dangerous in Russia.

"When I played for the Maple Leafs, Jeff Reese was robbed at gunpoint in Los Angeles," recalled Mike Krushelnyski, who was recently hired to coach Vityaz (rough translation: Warriors), the team that plays in Chekhov. "Life happens everywhere."

That may be true, but even Krushelnyski seems to know the safest way to flourish in Russian hockey is by not asking too many questions. For instance, what's the name of his employer, his team's owner?

"Nikolai," he said, sipping a coffee before a recent morning practice.

Nikolai who?

"Just Nikolai," Krushelnyski said.

Security aside, some Russian players say expats like Grahame actually have it too good in Russia these days.

Former Maple Leaf defenceman Dmitri Yushkevich said when he played for Chelabynsk, a team near the Ural Mountains, a foreign player was set up with an apartment complete with a satellite dish and free cable TV. After that player left the club, a Russian moved in.

But when the team signed another foreigner, a club official stopped by the Russian player's apartment and disconnected the dish and cable box to take to the new player.

"There's no question the clubs here treat foreigners better than us," said Igor Korolev, another former Maple Leaf playing in Russia. Korolev plays alongside Emery in Mytishchi. "They get better apartments, better cars. That's just how it is."

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